Elizabeth Shulman is one of our participants in our Year in the Life series, which follows new archivists in their first professional position. We will be following Elizabeth for a year. You can read her previous posts here.
Greetings again from the Mallbrary! I figure with it being graduation time for library students, I want to write a bit about the application and interviewing process from the perspective of someone who both just got a job and someone who was involved with the hiring process. That’s right, I was recently on a small committee to hire a part-time librarian to work in the North Carolina Collection, particularly on weekends and for our evening hours. This will take a lot of weight off of myself and the Adult Services Librarian as our schedules are fairly inflexible at the moment. The Adult Services Librarian does programming every other Monday night and every other Saturday meaning he cannot switch Saturdays with me if I need to switch. It will also be nice not to run the risk of being in the mall space at night by myself on Mondays.
Anyways, back to the job application process! For those of you who are currently applying for jobs or students who just completed their first year and that job bug is crawling into your head, I know how you feel. I applied to a ton of jobs and did not start my job until five months after I graduated from grad school. I remember the annoyance and anger I felt, feeling like my applications were going into an empty void of nothingness where they disappeared and how I never would hear back from that institution. It’s frustrating and stressful and not a lot of fun. While I have very limited experience on the other side, I am happy to give a few pointers.
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